The American Spectator

DELIGHTFULLY RELIEVED
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s She Is Gone:

I have never heard anyone who knew so much about Mao Tse Tung and this includes people I met in China when I visited there in 1988.

The Gang of Four had just been exposed and put on trial and the Chinese people couldn’t wait to erase Mao from their history — he had brought virtually all of them nothing but misery!

I was appalled to find out that a person with this ideological bent was in the White House and delightfully relieved that she is gone!

Chalk up another righteous scalp for Glenn Beck and “Faux” News!
— Jennie Taliaferro
Dallas, Texas

I suppose somebody really should say it — so it might as well be me. “But when you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow…”
— Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

OVER-INFLATED
Re: George H. Wittman’s The European Union Wants A President:

Just to set the record staight on the idea of an EU president.

It is the over-inflated leaders in Europe who want a president. If your were to ask the people of the individual nations the answer would include the words: “sun don’t shine.”

I would like to ask Americans to imagine that some bright spark had the idea of blending all the nations of the Americas into one nation, and you had to give up The Dollar and close down Washington and move the capital to Panama, speak Spanish, do eveything in metres, dump the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Somehow I do not think you would have many takers. But then you most likely would not be asked. They did not ask us. They just did it.
— John Armstrong
From what is left of England

IF IT QUACKS
Re: George Neumayr’s Treachery as Lifestyle Choice:

Mr. Neumayr’s indictment of Obama’s and other’s incomprehension of the Ft. Hood attacks is spot on. But there are two sides of the incomprehension. To those of a certain vintage or with a knowledge of history what is truly incomprehensible, is how a Maj. Hasan could be allowed to go about his errand of promoting jihad and how responsible authorities could be so apathetic. Imagine during WWII an American soldier of German descent expressed pride and love of the Fatherland, proclaimed himself a loyal German and his fealty to German law first, passed around copies of Mein Kampf, openly praised Hitler, strutted around wearing swastikas, condemned the Allied war effort, celebrated Allied setbacks, advocated and cheered acts of sabotage, regularly communicated with enemy leaders, resisted deployment and openly tried to convert others to his cause all in plain sight and with an in-your-face attitude. What do you suppose the reaction of authorities, not to mention his barrack mates, would have been? Would he have even made it past basic training? We wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to his actions then nor would we even today. Even now such an adherent of Hitler’s would be drummed out of the service. No, indeed, he would have found himself cooling his heels in an internment camp for the duration just as thousands of German-American Bund members did who engaged precisely in those acts in the lead up to hostilities because they were correctly seen as enemy sympathizers and potential threats. (Disclosure: my grandfather came to America from Munich, Germany between the wars and I say if ever a people deserved to have their butts kicked it was the Germans of the Third Reich)

Is this to say we should round up all Muslims for the duration, as a young sophist (my teenaged son) asked? Of course not. Just as we can look to our WWII experience for answers to the blatant Maj. Hasans of our time we can look also for guidance to the more delicate issues of how to deal with loyal, decent Muslim-Americans. Tens of thousands of Americans of German, Italian, Japanese and other descendents of our then enemies served with distinction and honor fighting for America on battlefields all over the world. An all Japanese-American infantry unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the famous “go for broke” outfit, fought throughout Europe and went on to become one of America’s most highly decorated units ever, winning 21 Congressional Medals of Honor. So, does this mean Muslims should be segregated even as their parents and families rot in camps (again, my son, sigh…). And again, of course not, because all we need to do is marshall the courage and strength to start making distinctions again as they did in a saner, less politically correct time.

One of the more perverse aspects of political correctness is the condescension of its practitioners. Apparently, the common take at bottom on Maj. Hasan was “he doesn’t really mean it” which is to render him something less than a man who doesn’t know his own mind and convictions or fully comprehend his statements or actions. It is to overlay one’s own worldview and prejudices on another. But if “diversity”, as defined by the superficial assembling of the correct number of colors and creeds, for its own sake is the great goal of political correctness then discretion must be its greatest casualty in principle and now, innocent lives, in practice. With more surely to come. And what’s truly perverse and evil is that by failing to weed out the Maj. Hasans in a phony notion of tolerance the authorities make suspicion of all Muslims more likely. Revisit my comparison above; it is Maj. Hasan to the letter only with a different flavor. We must summon the courage to begin again to make distinctions based on behavior something our less complicated forebears understood. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and even proclaims itself a duck then it’s probably a duck and when life and limb are on the line we cannot take any chances on that duck, his feelings or our own be damned.
— Mark Shepler
Jupiter, Florida